


Sleepless Nights

by Rhianne



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: F/M, Gen, refers to canon character 'death'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-02-09
Updated: 2014-02-09
Packaged: 2018-01-11 18:23:17
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 583
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1176364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rhianne/pseuds/Rhianne
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The plane crash isn't what gives Steve Rogers nightmares.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sleepless Nights

The SHIELD psychologists want him to open up; to unburden his soul on their shoulders. To tell them stories of sleepless nights and restless wanderings, when the nightmares drive him from his bed to roam Stark Tower.

Those are the stories they think they'll never hear; the things that a man - a soldier - from the 1940s couldn't possibly know how to put into words. So, when he doesn't say them they merely nod their heads and make notes in their books. They write words like repression, denial and PTSD, underlined, pens poised as if they're simply waiting patiently for the day that he cracks.

They're wrong.

Those aren't the secrets Steve conceals. Those nightmares aren't the reason he continues to run mile after mile through Manhattan, then Brooklyn, searching desperately for some sign of the world he used to know.

Steve does dream of the ice. His mind drags him back to the plane; dread pooling in his stomach as he sits in the cockpit and pushes hard on the controls, sending the plane into its final spiral. He can still taste the fear, the sheer horror of knowing that he's falling to his death and the absolute certainty that there is no other option; that if he doesn't die then millions of innocent people will. 

Better him than everyone else. 

On those nights Steve wakes up gasping, remembering the feel of water pouring down his throat and the agony of bones that had shattered on impact, the serum keeping him conscious just long enough to let him drown.

But those aren't the dreams that frighten him. He may wake up with salt in his throat and blood on his lips, but the effects never linger. The serum calms his breathing quickly and Jarvis' calm tone bringing him back to the present, to where his warm, silken bed sheets are a wonder to a poor Catholic boy from Brooklyn.

In Stark Tower he's surrounded by luxury, a permanent reminder of a future Steve only ever thought he'd see in comic books and at movie theaters. Somehow it's always enough to drive away his memories of pain, of death and fear. A reminder that he survived despite the odds.

The dreams Steve truly fears take a very different form.

He dreams of Bucky; and of Peggy. Of a regular job and a house in Brooklyn, quiet evenings spent by a roaring fire and weekends in the park with his children. He dreams of a life he never got to live. A life out of the spotlight. Nothing grand, nothing flashy; just a loving family and close friends and no more war. A life where his shield gathers dust on a shelf – one more relic to show his grandchildren. He dreams of the life he was fighting for, the life that he'd hoped to have after the war; of people and places that have long since fallen to dust beneath the earth. 

Those are the nights he wakes up silent, the pillow beneath his face already soaked through with tears. On those nights he doesn't turn on the light, just stares into the darkness and tries to breathe through the loss, tries not to see the cold lights of modern day Manhattan reflected back through the glass.

In the dream he is happy; he's with the woman he loves and the war is over, America is free and there's no more need to fight. 

It's when he wakes up that he's back in the nightmare.


End file.
